3. New York
Times article — commented on in #2 — “A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling
Up”.

_____________________________________________________________________

Patrick Gunkel Gunkel’s Collected
Works

~1988

Law and government.

(Remarks submitted to a public
hearing.)

• WHY A BICYCLE HELMET LAW WOULD BE ABSURD

Patrick Gunkel

There is no
reason to believe that a public hearing such as this will accurately reflect
the ratio of views of the electorate itself.Indeed, the probability is that it will not.On the other hand, owners of bicycle shops that peddle safety
helmets have the strongest possible reason to attend, and to speak with
deceptive force, due to the enormous
windfall profits that would result from passage of a helmet law.

Over the past
few weeks I have mentioned the proposed law to a number of my neighbors and
asked how they felt about it.Only a
small minority of Austinians seem to have even
heard of the proposal.But once
the concept is explained to them, I find that, among neighbors who actually
ride bikes, fewer than 20%
would approve of any law mandating the wearing of helmets by cyclists!The fact that the City Council is even contemplating such a law
shocks and outrages many persons.

Statistics

Statistical
evidence that may be cited in support of bicycle helmet laws is apt to be misleading for a variety of
reasons, and in any case is no substitute for good judgment in this matter.

To illustrate,
studies which purport to show a lesser rate and severity of head injuries in
the subgroup of cyclists who voluntarily wear helmets, may in reality simply
demonstrate what one would expect in the first place:that those who are cautious and skillful riders — and who suffer
less injury as a result — are also more apt to buy and wear helmets.This indirect correlation can wildly distort
such statistics!

Nor need
statistical studies of changes in accident rates after the passage of helmet laws be reliable.For example, there is apt to be a transient
effect, as the new helmets temporarily
make cyclists more safety conscious.

Every scientist
will attest to the extreme difficulty and complexity of proving almost any
proposal through statistical studies, and to the ease with which statistics can
be corrupted (and are
regularly corrupted) through the bias of investigators and those who cite
statistical data second- or thirdhand, even in defense of opposite contentions.

Irony

There is a great
deal of irony in the city hatching such a frivolity as a bicycle helmet law even while it blindly neglects the deadly
hazards of gutters that have migrated an inch or two above or below
street level, of street
surfaces seemingly designed to
upend irrelevant bicycles, of
pavings dropping off suddenly into perilous holes and canyons, of bridge sidings thrown abruptly
in the way of unwarned cyclists on convergent lanes, and of autoists seemingly educated in the churlish
philosophy that bikers are simply vermin to be honked and squeezed off the
road.

Overgovernment

Nomocracy — or
reliance on legal machinery to govern society — is an admirable concept, but in
practice such a system has its costs, limitations, and risks, and can easily be
taken to excess.Proponents of a
bicycle helmet law perhaps need to be reminded of several nomocratic fallacies:The fallacy
that there can be a law for every problem and need.The fallacy that
a mechanical system of laws can equal or supersede intuitive judgment, common
sense, or the massive, pluralistic intelligence of free individuals making contextual and circumstantial
observations and decisions.The fallacy that laws have no cost,
either economic or spiritual.

We all need to
be wary of those monomaniacs in government who, for ideological, opportunistic,
or professional reasons, are only able to see the world in peculiar, narrow,
obsessive ways, who are blind and deaf to every other element and aspect of
reality, and yet who are often amazingly skilled at transmitting their
injurious obsessions and warped perspectives to a public untutored in the
psychopathology of monomania.

Actually the
political logic of many contemporary legislators and civil servants is clear:

The public is a
child that would be frightened and stupidly resistant if confronted outright
with the (assumed) need for
certain revolutions in law and behavior.Hence the political illuminati must benevolently trick the ignorant
public into submitting to the very
same revolutions cleverly introduced via a multitude of
tiny-but-cumulative, indirect, disguised, baited, and perhaps carefully planned
steps.

It is not hard
to foresee what such logic might lead to in the present instance, with the
safety helmets for cyclists insidiously followed by the municipal licensing of
all bikers, the restriction of bikers to an ever diminishing percentage of
roads and to certain exceptional streets, and the ultimate prohibition of
cycling as a marginal and technologically passé
recreation of kids and eccentrics (although exercise bikes might be exempted).

Yet why should
parentalistic government stop there,
when even more lives would be
saved by ordering the public to don helmets in cars, as pedestrians, in
showers, during domestic disputes, and in frail old age?Perhaps people should wear spacesuits, or at least
reflective paint?Maybe seat belts at
the dinner table are even now worth considering?

Motorbikes Vs.Footbikes

The treating of
motor cyclists as something other than adults by forcing them to wear helmets,
is a separate issue, but its argumentative use to legitimate the forcible
helmeting of the foot cyclist, by analogy, is especially open to question.

The bicyclist
tracks the side of the road, not the center for which all motorists compete.

The foot and
motor bike involve very different average and maximal velocity regimes, with
little overlap.Yet the mathematical
laws governing how kinetic energy, destructive energy, mortality, fatality, and
perceptual impairment increase with velocity are geometric, not arithmetic,
laws; so the higher velocities of the motor bike are vastly more dangerous.True, even the slowest bicyclist can be hit by a car; but so can the
pedestrian.

Presumably it is
largely due to such mathematical power laws that total governmental
expenditures in this country for the obligatory care of cyclists incapacitated
for life by head injury are (relatively speaking) almost nil.

Motorbikers are
far more apt to brave the night than footbikers, yet the nearby things which footbikers must see to travel safely at
night are far more discernible at that time than the distant cues required by
the motorbiker.

Footbikes are
more apt than motorbikes to be used on dirt trails, jogging paths, sidewalks,
and lawns, where presumably a helmet law would not apply.But since access thereto will generally be
gotten via a road, a helmet will have to be carried about in any case.Theft, or the intolerable nuisance of a
second — even less dependable — lock, will necessitate carrying helmets into
stores and other places.

The Problem of Enforcement

Children would never observe a dichotomy between
lawns and sidewalks versus
streets, so the proposed helmet law would be just another law that taught kids
to break and scoff at the Law.

Enforcement of
such an ordinance would be a nightmare, or simply impossible.Only a few squad cars are on the streets of
Austin at a given instant.Imagine how
those already overtaxed resources would be squandered through the need to
ticket children.Would three-year-olds
with tricycles — as well as adult
cyclists — be required to carry licenses at all times?Would mothers have to bring their toddlers
to traffic court?Or to jail after the
third or twenty-seventh offense?Would
cops have to chase after adolescents fleeing behind houses?

Only a madman
would embrace such consequences, or a quixotic councilor overlook them.

The Real Crime

However, the really heinous things about the
proposed ordinance are of a subtler and more philosophical nature.

The effect of
such arrogant legislation is to force all of us poor, sorry, long-suffering
citizens into a Procrustean bed at the behest of a few bureaucratic monkeys —
divinely inspired and unctuous with compassion — who would tell us how to brush
our teeth, dress, dot our i’s.

It is not our
fault that we are all so undisciplined and uneducated — human beings are born
backward and helpless, after all — but it would be the city’s fault if it did not supply the missing ingredients
from without, through the cudgel of criminal penalties.

For me, a
44-year-old adult living in a country founded as a repudiation of paternalism,
what the bicycle primarily
represents is a symbol:a symbol of freedom, of untrammeled
individuality, of self-sufficiency and simplicity, of grace of movement, of
nakedness before nature, of nature naked, of a personal joy not the concern of
any other human being, and of an experience still virgin, elementary,
spiritual.

No other
conveyance exposes one so directly and completely to the great outdoors.To no other vehicle is the world so open and
intimate.The bicycle is sacred, a
symbol of personal sovereignty, and it should remain untouched by the feverish,
intrusive paws of government.Alas,
nowadays it is about the only
thing one has wholly to oneself.

In contemplating
the council’s proposed law, I found myself recalling some remarks of the great Swiss
psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961):

____________________

When I visited the United States for the
first time, I was much astonished to see that there were no barriers at the
railway crossings and no protective hedges alongside the railway track.In the remoter districts the line was
actually used as a foot-path.When I
voiced my astonishment about this, I was informed, “Only an idiot could fail to
see that trains pass along the line at forty to a hundred miles an hour!”
Another thing that struck me is that nothing is verboten; instead, one
is merely “not allowed” to do something, or one is politely requested:“Please don’t——.”

These impressions, and others like them,
reduced themselves to the discovery that in America civic life appeals to the
intelligence and expects an intelligent response, whereas in Europe it plans
for stupidity.America fosters and
looks forward to intelligence; Europe looks back to see whether the dumb ones
are also coming along.Europe is
forever crying that bossy and officious “Verboten!” into our ears, whereas
America addresses herself to people’s common sense.

____________________

I should stress
to the City Council that Jung was praising
Americans.

Coda

In the seemingly unlikely event that the
City Council arrogantly passes a law making it a crime for an adult cyclist to
peddle about Austin unhelmeted, my own response will either be to ignore such
an ordinance altogether, as unjust and meddlesome, or to resign myself to the
imperatives of that council of fools by abandoning my bicycle to the
imperatives of the dumpster.

In either case, I hardly think I will be alone.

________________________________________

NOTES:

• At best — for
the advocates of a helmet law — it is as though about half (of us) were for,
and about half against, such a law.But
note that those for it are free to comply with their sense of the appropriate
by wearing a helmet themselves, whereas those opposed are to be forced to wear
a helmet as well, as an additional gratification to be given to the proponents of the
law.Thus one group IN ESSENCE seeks a DOUBLE
POWER through the obnoxious act of overriding the (often passionate) wish of
another group of approximately equal size to merely be self-regulating.

Yet in reality,
those opposed to the law seem to far outnumber those who favor it.

An
even more precise way to visualize the logic of the situation is:There is a city inhabited by just the two of
us.You wear a helmet by choice.But
you insist I wear one, too!

• Advocates of a
bicycle helmet law sometimes argue that, since government is obliged to pay the
costs of caring for cyclists institutionalized for life as a result of mental
incapacitation, this public burden gives government the right — or obligation —
to act to reduce communal liabilities by mandating helmets that can help to
prevent such injuries.One answer to
this argument has been mentioned already — the de facto tininess of that bicycle burden in the U.S.!But such a forensically panacean excuse for
a helmet law would be equally applicable to accidents at home — or anywhere — which
create a need for special institutional care at taxpayers’ expense.

• Persons who by
chance happen to know someone who has been seriously injured or traumatized by
a bicycle accident, may need to be gently reminded that the making of laws should have
nothing whatever to do with exceptional experience or events near in time.

• It seems odd
that the proposed helmet ordinance is to be introduced per saltum, in the absence of any earlier law applying just to
juveniles.After all, most bicycle head
injuries occur in kids, and children are usually considered more precious, they
are more careless, and their legal rights are more alienable than those of
adults.Extensions of the Law — where
they occur at all — should occur gradually, via intermediate stages.

• I called
Bicycle Sport Shop in Austin and found that helmets there start at $43 with
tax, which is 36% as much as my entire bike cost (new) in 1989.

• A helmet worn
in summer heat can be both uncomfortable and unhealthy.

• A bicycle
helmet subtracts from the dignity of an adult, even when it is worn
voluntarily.In my opinion it also has
a cosmetic (esthetic) cost, in that a cyclist whose head is uncovered looks
more innocent, free, attractive, and interesting to other persons.(Even strollers like looking at cyclists.)

• Although
initially a bicycle helmet ordinance would presumably only mandate the wearing
of light helmets, it might
later be toughened to require footbikers to wear motorbike helmets.But for a footbiker a helmet that covered the ears could actually reduce safety, by depriving the
wearer of invaluable auditory cues (which a motorbike’s
roar might mask).

• A friend to
whom I mentioned the proposed ordinance, remarked that his grandmother had just
broken her hip through a fall, but that she would probably have avoided this
injury if she had been wearing some sort of body armor (a “hip helmet”).His real
point, however, was that a mandatory helmet law would simply be equivalent to
thousands of other protective requirements which might be mandated instead or
in addition, just as deservedly and
just as foolishly.

• Would the City
ultimately require that bicyclists take vision tests and wear their
eyeglasses?That bicycles be subject to
annual inspections?

• A mandatory helmet law in Austin would create problems at
the city limits for cyclists from outside Austin touching or crossing the
boundary and for Austinites leaving the city, problems having to do with ignorance
of the law, positional uncertainties, the need to buy a helmet even if one
planned to visit the city just once, and the ragged and sometimes disconnected
nature of the city’s perimeter.

I found the
below newsstory, “A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up”, to be more
than a little amusing, in view of what I had had to say in “Why A Bicycle
Helmet Law Would Be Absurd”, a lengthy statement or essay that I prepared
around 1988 for a public hearing on the question of whether bicycle helmets
ought to be made mandatory in Austin, Texas.

There was
evidence even then, as I had remarked, that such laws might be ineffectual in
preventing or reducing bicycle deaths and injuries.

Moreover, I
pointed out that bicycle helmets might also have a paradoxical tendency to
INCREASE injuries, for several reasons, but especially because they would tend
to reduce the brain’s consciousness and acuity of perception of — and indeed,
its care and concern about — the external world, especially to the side and
rear of head and bike.There are many
reasons for this, and many are extremely subtle and technical.

But let me note
here that helmets inevitably alter the geometry of HEARING, in part because
they mask the rear and rear sides, in a way that is utterly abnormal, and in
good part incompensable by our more or less fixed evolutionary
neuropsychology.This might not seem
important, but I long ago realized that I bicycle about one-half with my ears.

This came to me
most forcefully when, as a result of an ear infection when I was living in
Canada in 1994, I temporarily lost my hearing.Suddenly I was profoundly disoriented and clumsy on the street, on my
bike, couldn’t integrate well and fluidly my picture of my surroundings and the
movement within it, and the timing of my own actions therewith, and as a
consequence I was extremely anxious for my safety.

The reality is
that, when I am cycling, my ears are my rearward eyes.I virtually never need to look to see if a
car is coming along to my side or from my rear when I turn into a street or am
moving along a road (except, that is, as a DEMONSTRATIVE social courtesy to a
motorist, who needs to be reassurred); I can SEE it auditorily at once, its
distance and roughly its speed, or even acceleration, and its size, as well as
the angle it may have, and I do this instantly (in a fraction of a second),
automatically, reliably, and efficienctly.This auricular reliance is not the result of bravado or carelessness.

On the contrary,
I am, in part as a neuroscientist, acutely conscious of, and wary because of,
the dangers of the road and of the masses and momenta of, and brutal threats
constantly posed by, cars and trucks, and the psychological, moral, and
behavioral dispersion to be expected in the hundreds of thousands of human
types who pass me by on the roadside annually, in their turbulent streams and
rivers.In fact, it simply amazes me
that bicyclists aren’t killed and hauled away by the truckloads.

A very different
kind of suspicion I have about bicycle helmets has to do with ATTITUDINAL
effects from the wearing of helmets.That they can induce a certain smugness or false sense of safety in
those who wear them is obvious enough, but there are more subtle possibilities
as well.

A helmet may not
only reduce the amplitudinal spherical isotropy of normal hearing, but
literally, albeit largely subconsciously, distort its subjective or mentally
calculated shape, in part because of the helmet’s reflective surfaces near the
ear, but also in part because the amplitudinal anisotropy is apt to cause a
compensatory warping of the still free lateral and forward auditory field, or
‘the way the brain thinks about it’ and reacts to kaleidoscopic events, needs,
and possibilities within it.(There is
no need for a helmet to cover the ears for it to have these detrimental effects
on auditory perception.)

Similar
distortions, moreover, can be produced by the MERE PRESENCE of the object
represented by the helmet on the head as well, since the brain invests part of
its consciousness in the abnormal and intrusive — heavy, gravitationally and
inertially off-center, tactile, and pre-visualized — object’s constant
contemplation, and this is, not just distracting, but apt to once again be
something that distorts the way the world is EFFECTIVELY SEEN, and practically
responded to.(Again, this is a case
that requires the sophisticated technical knowledge of a student of the brain
to be fully or at all appreciated.)

There is the
additional, seemingly bizarre, but after all — to any close observer of human
beings and their social psychology — not unreasonable, possibility that those
who wear bike helmets incur an attitudinal risk WITHOUT, and, at least in a
sense, through no fault of their own.The truth is that, especially in contemporary American society, there is
a queer animalic — and to some extent age and social stratification — rivalry,
and a broader enmity, between those who ride bicycles and those who drive cars
and trucks, on one and the same street at one and the same time.In short, many motorists — I have been told
and I intuitively and rationally believe — hate cyclists.

They may
variously regard them with amused contempt; resentment at their marginal
presence and over their marginal intrusions on the motorist’s field of view and
surface of rolling confinement; annoyance at the mutual risks and need for
mutual attentions they cause; the instinctive arrogance or indifference of a
larger beast toward a much smaller, weaker, and less numerous creature or
species; disdain for the almost flamboyant, punkish, Mardi Gras, effeminate, or
adolescent high-tech fluorescent sports clothes and other bodily accouterments
specially designed for bicyclists that are now so often worn; anger over the
occasional greater freedoms, ease, and pleasures of the bicycler and his ‘equal
rights’ under the law (especially where the motorist finds himself by contrast
stuck — unfairly and cruelly deprived of his usual greatly superior speed, and
rightful eminence, in view of all the stuff in his car and the orders of
magnitude greater cost or economic value of his AUTOMOBILE — in a crawling
column of other plain and ordinary cars); misgeneralized or hysteretic
perception of those who ride on bicycles as being mere or troublesome or
privileged juveniles; or, in certain cases, an exaggerated anger over the
occasional dangerous antics or aggressive or heedless trespasses of a minority
of bikers or the rare but inevitable idiot.

All this was a
necessary, if unforgivable, preamble to my mentioning the odd attitudinal risk
of the biker with a helmet that I thought I should include here as well, as a
speculative hunch, even though it may make only a modest contribution to the
rising accident and injury statistics.

I think that all
the fancy and almost outrageous clothes of today’s bicyclists, and now the
addition of the, aspectually, almost impertinent helmet, may prompt some
drivers, especially ones with certain kinds of personalities, to be abnormally
aggressive, or even deliberately careless, and certainly lamentably forgetful,
with respect to these “cute, princely, and execrable” cyclists who so decorate
themselves and now even flaunt helmets.

Indeed, I would
guess that a great MANY of those who would indulge in the wearing of such
lepidopteran garb (I omit the nerdy helmets) do in fact ride about with
attitudes of mock superiority, disdain, or even deity that are bound to be felt
as outrageous by many motorists, and that do at times lead to fateful
transgressions by both the cyclists and the motorists — motorists whose
awareness averages and confuses all times and places in its emotional residues
and behavioral translations.

My last point,
among my remarks, was admittedly a small one to have had to elaborate on at
such length, simply because of what it might have to say about the complexity
and curiosity of human beings.

Here is the
newsstory, then, which, placed upon the matte of what I have just written, may
now be seen in a somewhat different light.

—
Patrick Gunkel

_______________________

APPENDIX (story commented on above):

New York Times, 2001 July 29.

• “A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling
Up”

By JULIAN E.BARNES

Millions of
parents take it as an article of faith that putting a bicycle helmet on their
children, or themselves, will help keep them out of harm’s way.

But new data on
bicycle accidents raises questions about that. The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991,
even as bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by
the Consumer Product Safety Commission.But given that ridership has declined over the same period, the rate of
head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle
helmets have become widespread.

What is going on
here?No one is very sure, but safety
experts stress that while helmets do not prevent accidents from happening, they
are extremely effective at reducing the severity of head injuries when they do
occur.Almost no one suggests that
riders should stop wearing helmets, which researchers have found can reduce the
severity of brain injuries by as much as 88 percent.

Still, with
fewer people riding bicycles, experts are mystified as to why injuries are on
the rise.“It’s puzzling to me that we
can’t find the benefit of bike helmets here,” said Ronald L.Medford, the assistant executive director of
the safety commission’s hazard identification office.

Some cycling
advocates contend that rising numbers of aggressive drivers are at fault, while
others suggest that many riders wear helmets improperly and do not know the
rules of the road.Some transportation
engineers say there are not enough safe places to ride.

Many specialists
in risk analysis argue that something else is in play.They believe that the increased use of bike
helmets may have had an unintended consequence: riders may feel an inflated
sense of security and take more risks.

In August 1999,
Philip Dunham, then 15, was riding his mountain bike in the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park in North Carolina and went over a jump on a trail.As he did, his back tire kicked up, the bike
flipped over and he landed on his head.The helmet he was wearing did not protect his neck; he was paralyzed
from the neck down.

Two years later,
Philip has regained enough movement and strength in his arms to use a manual
wheelchair.He has also gained some
perspective.With the helmet he felt
protected enough to ride off-road on a challenging trail, in hindsight perhaps
too safe.

“It didn’t cross
my mind that this could happen,” said Philip, now 17.“I definitely felt safe.I wouldn’t do something like that without a helmet.”

In the last nine
years, 19 state legislatures have passed mandatory helmet laws.Today, such statutes cover 49 percent of
American children under 15.

And even some
professionals have embraced helmets.While a majority of the riders in the Tour de France have worn helmets
infrequently, Lance Armstrong, the American cyclist favored to win the race
today, wore a helmet through most of the race.

Altogether,
about half of all riders use bike helmets today, compared with fewer than 18
percent a decade ago, the first year the safety commission examined helmet use.

During the same
period, overall bicycle use has declined about 21 percent as participation in
in-line skating, skateboarding and other sports has increased, according to the
National Sporting Goods Association, which conducts an annual survey of
participation in different sports.Off-road mountain biking is often considered more risky than ordinary
bicycling, but it is unlikely to account for the recent increase in bicyclists’
head injuries.Participation in
off-road mountain biking has declined 18 percent since 1998, the association
said.

Even so,
bicyclists suffered 73,750 head injuries last year, compared with 66,820 in
1991, according to the safety commission’s national injury surveillance system,
with the sharpest increase coming in the last three years.Children’s head injuries declined until the
mid-1990’s, but they have risen sharply since then and now stand near their
1991 levels even with fewer children riding bikes.

The safety
commission is now investigating why head injuries have been increasing.Officials hope that by examining emergency
room reports more closely and interviewing crash victims, they can find out if
more of the injuries are relatively minor, and how many people suffered head
injuries while wearing helmets.Some
bicycling advocates have questioned the statistics on participation in
bicycling, and the commission plans to re-examine those as well.

Dr. Richard
A.Schieber, a childhood injury
prevention specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
the leader of a national bicycle safety initiative, said public health
officials were realizing that in addition to promoting helmet use, safety
officials must teach good riding skills, promote good driving practices and
create safer places for people to ride.

“We have moved
the conversation from bicycle helmet use to bicycle safety,” Dr. Schieber
said.“Thank God that the public health
world is understanding there is more to bicycle safety than helmets.”

Promoting
bicycle helmets without teaching riders about traffic laws or safe riding
practices can encourage a false sense of security, according to several risk
experts.Helmets may create a sort of
daredevil effect, making cyclists feel so safe that they ride faster and take
more chances, said Mayer Hillman, a senior fellow emeritus at the Policy
Studies Institute in London.

“You would be
well advised to wear a helmet provided you could persuade yourself it is of
little use,” Dr. Hillman said.

One parallel,
risk experts said, is anti-lock brakes.When they were introduced in the 1980’s, they were supposed to reduce
accidents, but government and industry studies in the mid-1990’s showed that as
drivers realized their brakes were more effective they started driving faster,
and some accident rates rose.

Insurance
companies have long been familiar with the phenomenon, which they call moral
hazard.Once someone is covered by an
insurance policy there is a natural tendency for that person to take more
risks.Companies with workers’
compensation insurance, for instance, have little incentive to make their
workplaces safer.To counter such moral
hazard, insurers may give discounts to companies that reduce hazardous
conditions in their factories, said Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the
Insurance Information Institute.

“People tend to
engage in risky behavior when they are protected,” he said.“It’s a ubiquitous human trait.”

Even cyclists
who discount the daredevil effect admit that they may ride faster on more
dangerous streets when they are wearing their helmets.

On May 5, Noah
Budnick, a 24- year-old New York resident, was wearing a helmet and cycling on
Avenue B in Manhattan when he had to pull out from the side of the street to
avoid a double-parked car and a taxicab idling behind it.As he moved to the left, the cab pulled out,
striking Mr.Budnick.He broke his fall with his hands and did not
hit his head on the ground, but the accident left him with a deep cut on his
leg and a badly strained knee.

Although the cab
was at fault for the accident, Mr.Budnick said, if he had been riding more slowly he might not have had
the accident.

“I probably
would have ridden more cautiously and less aggressively without the helmet,” he
said.“I don’t know if I would ride in
Manhattan at the speed I was going.”

Still, many
cycling advocates contend that it is not bicyclists but drivers who are more
reckless.Distractions like cell phones
have made drivers less attentive, they say, and congestion is making roads more
dangerous for cyclists.They also
believe that some drivers of sport utility vehicles and other trucks simply
drive too close to cyclists.

Brendan Batson,
a 16-year-old high school sophomore in central Maine, had been knocked off the
road twice by drivers, so as he entered the home stretch of a 60-mile ride on
May 26, he was wearing his helmet.But
as he passed through Norridgewock, Me., riding along the shoulder of a rural
highway, a pickup truck struck him from behind.It hit Brendan with enough force to rip the helmet from his head,
the straps gouging his face before tearing off.Brendan was dragged along the road, past a friend he was cycling
with, then thrown to the side.He was
killed instantly.

It is difficult
to show statistically that drivers have become more reckless in the last
decade.The percentage of fatal bicycle
accidents that involved cars has declined, falling from 87 percent in 1991 to
83 percent in 1998, according to the C.D.C.

Thom Parks, a
vice president in charge of safety for the helmet maker Bell Sports, said
safety standards could be upgraded and helmets could be designed to meet
them.But that would make helmets heavier,
bulkier and less comfortable.“There
are limits to what a consumer would accept,” Mr.Parks said, adding that if helmets became bigger, fewer people
might wear them.

Dr. James
P.Kelly, a neurologist and a
concussion expert at Northwestern University Medical School, said that even
as helmets were currently designed, patients who were wearing them when they
were injured were much better off than those who were not.

“Bicycle helmet
technology is the best we have for protecting the brain,” Dr. Kelly said.“The helmets serve the function of an air
bag.”

But the most
effective way to reduce severe head injuries may be to decrease the number of
accidents in the first place.

“Over the past
several decades, society has come to equate safety with helmets,” said Charles
Komanoff, the co-founder of Right of Way, an organization that promotes the
rights of cyclists and pedestrians.“But wearing a helmet does not prevent crashes.”